Finance Morning | Xi to Make State Visit to U.S.; Deutsche Bank Warns Global Rate-Hike Wave May Beat Expectations

📊 Asian Markets Today

(Note: Japan's stock market was closed for holidays from Sept 21 to 23; the Nikkei 225 figure reflects the most recent trading-day close.)

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1. Xi Jinping to Make State Visit to U.S. on Sept 23-25

Source: Caixin

Citing Caixin, China's foreign ministry spokesperson announced that at the invitation of U.S. President Donald Trump, President Xi Jinping will make a state visit to the United States from Sept 23 to 25.

Information from the same column also showed that China-U.S. trade and economic talks were held in New York, and that the two sides held a dialogue on artificial intelligence issues.

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2. Biotech Rally: Outbound Licensing Tops $120 Billion

Source: Sina Finance

China's innovative-drug sector rallied on Sept 22. Citing Sina Finance, Haiyi Pharmaceutical (Beijing Stock Exchange) rose by the 30cm limit, Trugen Life (ChiNext) by the 20% limit, while a string of names including Harbin Sanlian, Harbin Pharmaceutical and Shandong Xinhua Pharmaceutical hit the 10% limit; WuXi AppTec, BeiGene and Hengrui Pharmaceuticals also gained more than 4%. The innovative-drug sector index rose 4.69% in a single day with turnover above RMB 53.4 billion; the Hang Seng Biotech Index in Hong Kong rose over 5%.

Policy support has been flowing in densely. On Sept 18, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and nine other departments released the 15th Five-Year Plan for the pharmaceutical industry; on Sept 20, the National Medical Products Administration said at a State Council Information Office briefing that it will establish a market-exclusivity system for children's medicines and rare-disease drugs; on the same day Reuters reported that a new rule being drafted by the U.S. Treasury tends to allow U.S. drugmakers to keep licensing Chinese new drugs.

Licensing deals are the bright spot. Wind data show that in the first half, 22 A-share innovative-drug companies posted revenue of RMB 44.81 billion, up 55.3% year on year, with net profit attributable to shareholders swinging to a gain, up 406.5%; 60 H-share companies posted revenue of RMB 93.91 billion, up 22%, with BeiGene's net profit up 627%. NMPA data show 81 outbound licensing deals in the first half totaling about $110 billion, already 80% of the full-year 2025 total and a record high; by mid-September the official figure was updated to more than $120 billion year to date, up 36% year on year, with upfront payments above $10 billion. Tian Lihui, a finance professor at Nankai University, cautioned: "The total BD amount is a ceiling, not a floor."

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3. Moutai Updates Its Flagship Store Rules: Purchase Limits, Price Changes

Source: 21st Century Business Herald

Citing 21st Century Business Herald, Moutai updated its flagship-store rules on Sept 17: individuals buying 500ml Feitian Moutai are limited to one case per day and no more than five cases a year; corporate clients are limited to five cases per day and 50 a year. The same day, flagship-store execution prices for six products were published: Feitian 1,766 yuan, Five-Star 1,756 yuan, 1-liter Feitian 3,291 yuan, the Bingwu Horse-Year zodiac bottle 1,951 yuan, Jingpin 2,410 yuan, and 15-year aged 4,279 yuan. The limits apply only to the 500ml Feitian and cover 42 offline flagship stores nationwide.

Two price systems coexist online and offline: iMoutai's Feitian retail price remains 1,639 yuan, while the flagship store charges 1,766 yuan, a gap of 127 yuan per bottle. Prices have been adjusted almost every one or two months: on March 31 the flagship price rose from 1,499 to 1,539 yuan; in May several non-standard iMoutai products rose 60 to 200 yuan; on July 18 iMoutai's Feitian was set at 1,639 yuan; in late July the flagship store rose to 1,719 yuan; on Aug 8 it rose again to 1,753 yuan and opened to walk-in customers for the first time; and on Sept 8 it rose to 1,766 yuan. After the successive increases, in mid-September the gap between whole-case and loose-bottle wholesale prices narrowed to about 15 yuan, with loose bottles at about 1,720 yuan and whole cases about 1,735 yuan.

Operationally, Moutai's growth slowed markedly in the first half. Its half-year report showed revenue of RMB 92.278 billion, up 1.30%, and net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 44.517 billion, down 1.95%. The second quarter was under greater pressure: revenue of RMB 37.575 billion, down 5.23%, and net profit of RMB 17.274 billion, down 6.90%.

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4. Hang Seng Rises 0.18%; Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu Gain

Source: 21st Century Business Herald

Citing 21st Century Business Herald, Hong Kong's major indices opened higher on Sept 22 and trimmed gains in the afternoon. By the close, the Hang Seng Index rose 0.18% and the Hang Seng Tech Index rose 0.34%.

By sector, software services, media and electrical equipment advanced; semiconductors slipped in the afternoon; building materials, paper, transport, machinery and non-ferrous metals led declines. Among internet names, Tencent Holdings rose more than 8% intraday, with Lenovo Group, Alibaba, Kuaishou, JD.com and Baidu also higher; Xiaomi and Meituan ended lower. Among heavily traded stocks, Zhipu fell more than 6% and MiniMax nearly 4%; Hua Hong and SMIC both declined.

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5. Toyota's Two China Ventures: Restructured, Not Merged

Source: 21st Century Business Herald

Citing 21st Century Business Herald, GAC Group unexpectedly suspended trading on Sept 14. That evening it announced it plans to buy part of a vehicle joint venture held by China FAW Group's listed arm via a share issue and to raise supporting funds; after the deal, FAW's listed arm would become GAC's second-largest and strategically influential shareholder. Media, citing people familiar with the matter, said the target is FAW Toyota, but GAC will not buy all of FAW's stake, and FAW Toyota will continue to exist.

The fading luster of joint-venture brands is the backdrop. At its peak, Toyota sold 1.944 million vehicles in China in 2021; in 2025 that fell to 1.5781 million, of which FAW Toyota sold about 805,500 and GAC Toyota about 772,600. GAC swung to a full-year net loss in 2025, and its first-half net loss this year widened 75.98% year on year to RMB 4.467 billion. FAW's self-brand sales topped 940,000 units in 2025, up 15%, but its self-brand new-energy penetration was only 13.5%.

Under the restructuring plan now circulating, FAW Toyota's equity structure could change to Toyota 50%, FAW 25% and GAC 25%. Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the passenger-car branch of the China Automobile Dealers Association, noted that from January to July 2026 auto-industry revenue was RMB 6.078 trillion, up 2.7%, but profit was RMB 216.2 billion, down 20%.

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6. Kim Keon-hee Gets a Lighter Sentence

Source: 21st Century Business Herald

Citing 21st Century Business Herald, on the afternoon of Sept 22 local time, the Seoul High Court issued its appellate ruling in the case of Kim Keon-hee, wife of former President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was accused of using her position as first lady to accept expensive gifts in exchange for improper favors—a "selling of offices" case. Kim was sentenced to five years, a reduction from the first-instance sentence.

Prosecutors alleged that around the time Yoon took office, Kim used her position as first lady to take requests from construction firms, tech companies and individuals, accepting luxury jewelry, watches, designer bags and famous paintings in a "selling of offices" scheme. The Seoul Central District Court delivered the first-instance verdict in June this year, sentencing Kim to seven years and finding all charges proven; the appellate court deemed some suspicions not guilty, and the sentence was therefore reduced.

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7. Apsara Conference Opens: Alibaba's Wu Yongming Sees a "Machine-Intelligence Era"

Source: Sina Finance

Citing Sina Finance, the 2026 Apsara Conference opened on Sept 22, where Alibaba CEO Wu Yongming said in his keynote that Alibaba believes the world is entering a machine-intelligence era—"machines are becoming the main force of thinking, and intelligence is becoming a commodity that can be scaled." He judged that total machine thinking will be 1,000 times that of humans, versus less than 3% today, with machines expected to handle 99.9% of the thinking work.

His other judgment is that the representative product of the machine-intelligence era has yet to appear, and today's AI Coding remains at the stage of the light bulb in 1882; the three cornerstones of the machine-intelligence era are AI models, AI chips and AI cloud. He said the Qwen team plans to train models of 5 to 10 trillion parameters, moving toward ASI.

At the event, Alibaba's T-Head released a new-generation AI chip, Zhenwu V900, whose computing power is three times that of Zhenwu M890, with a single cluster scalable to 500,000 cards; Wu called it "China's strongest AI chip." Alibaba said it will invest fully in AI infrastructure, aiming for the global data-center scale operated by Alibaba Cloud to exceed 20GW by 2032.

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8. Deutsche Bank Warns of a Global Rate-Hike Wave That May Beat Expectations

Source: Cailian Press

Citing Cailian Press, Deutsche Bank warned in a Monday report that as the world enters a synchronized tightening cycle, investors may be underestimating the scale of rate increases. Macro strategist Henry Allen stressed that the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan all raised rates in the past two weeks.

Allen noted that Brent crude is around $100 a barrel and other commodity prices have risen broadly, gains that have not yet shown up in inflation data or surveys; energy shocks can also feed through to transport, production and service prices. He also noted that Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has acknowledged that "inflation has exceeded the target level for more than five years." He argued the current financial conditions are looser than at the start of the last cycle, with the S&P 500 near record highs and credit spreads narrow, implying more hikes may be needed to bring inflation down.

Crucially, Allen said history shows "markets tend to underestimate rather than overestimate the scale of hiking cycles"—in 2022 investors initially expected 200 basis points of Fed hikes for the year, but the final increase exceeded 400 basis points. Still, he said strong growth means hikes need not derail stocks, citing 1999: the Fed hiked and Treasury yields rose, yet the S&P 500 still gained nearly 20% that year. According to CME's FedWatch, the probability the Fed holds rates at 3.75%-4.00% at its October meeting is 43.5%, while the probability of a 25-basis-point hike is 56.5%.

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9. Iran's President Heads to the UN; Oil Prices Plunge

Source: Securities Times

Citing Securities Times, international oil prices plunged on Sept 22: WTI crude futures fell as much as 2% intraday after earlier rising more than 1%, while Brent crude fell 1.0% intraday after earlier gaining more than 1.70%. After the oil slide, the three main U.S. stock-index futures rallied and all turned positive intraday; European stocks also edged higher, with Germany's DAX30 up 0.18%, France's CAC40 up 0.26%, the Euro Stoxx 50 up 0.18% and the UK's FTSE 250 up 0.25%.

On the news front, CCTV International reported that on Sept 22 Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian flew from Tehran to New York to attend the high-level week of the 81st UN General Assembly, and is expected to address the general debate on the morning of Sept 23 local time. Separately, Xinhua reported that on Sept 22, citing Al-Masirah TV controlled by Yemen's Houthi movement, Saudi warplanes carried out airstrikes early that day on the Red Sea port city of Mocha in Yemen's southwestern Taiz province, killing six people and injuring eight.

Oil had already fallen sharply the previous trading day. As of the Sept 21 close, the October light-sweet crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell $4.52 to $95.78 a barrel, down 4.51%; the November Brent contract fell $3.53 to $100.34 a barrel, down 3.4%. Ryan McKay, senior commodity strategist at TD Securities, said crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz are rising, and overall Middle East crude shipments have recovered to about 80% of levels before the Iran conflict broke out.

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10. BofA: AI-Driven Capital Flows Into Asia; the Trillion-Dollar Memory Market to Double

Source: Caixin

Citing Caixin, Woo Dong-jae, head of Korea equity research and head of Asia technology research at BofA Global Research, said the global memory industry's annual market size has reached about $1 trillion and is expected to double to $2 trillion around 2030. He made the remarks at the BofA Securities 2026 Asia Pacific Conference.

Joseph Lee, head of Asia Pacific equity sales at BofA, said that during the pandemic the U.S. economy greatly outperformed the world and capital flowed back to the U.S.; that trend is now reversing, with capital flowing back into Asia, and artificial intelligence is the most important driver, lifting turnover in nearly every Asian market this year. "Global capital flows follow GDP growth; Asia-Pacific GDP grows about 5% on average versus about 2% for the rest of the world."

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